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I usually powdercoat tumble lube type bullets and have zero problems with chambering. I coated some regular shaped bullets like lees 9mm with the standard shape and lube grooves, like a fmj bullet. I don't have the box with lee's number on it.
anyway, I coat, cook and size them. when loaded, they look beautiful but dont go into battery in any of my 9mm pistols.
I know what the problem is the thick PC gets stuck in the rifling and wont let the round chamber. So, what do you all do to deal with this? I want to load some bullets with no lube grooves.

look at the NOE HTC-358-133-RN-B05. It is a no lube groove RN that has the nose portion sized at .340 so powder coating does not affect chambering. The problem you are having is common to PC bullets and NOE has several molds featuring reduced diameter nose portions
Loren

Been there, done that, got the lands printed to prove it! I did the same thing with a Lyman .224 mold last weekend and had to back them down 40 thou due to the two PC coats on a shallow ogive. Just give the seater a turn and see if it clunks into the chamber and check the accuracy.

bigjake, how many of your barrels have nearly zero freebore in front of the chamber? These are problematic regardless of boolit style or coating. I like to see a throat that will let you plunk whatever will cycle through the magazine. Even published load data has to often be compromized to work around a non-throated barrel. SAAMI specs call for freebore, very few gun makers actually adhere to this spec. Throating the barrel is an affordable, one-time event that will let you load whatever you want, however long you want to load it.

Every gun barrel is or can be slightly different even in the same model gun. So you can just guess at what your OAL length needs to be, like most, or you can easily determine your ideal OAL for every bullet design you have and for every gun you have.

All you need as a cartridge case and and a way to cut it; a Dremel tool with a cutting disk works well. First size the case and sort through and find an ideal case of the proper length. For 9mm I use .750" as the ideal length. For 45 ACP I use .495". Remember these tapered cases headspace off the mouth of the case, so length is important for consistent accuracy.

Cut a slice into the case like in the photo, which will now allow a sized bullet to be barely inserted into the case, held by tension, but still can be pushed deeper into the case. Now with thumb pressure push the case/bullet into the gun barrel's chamber until it is fully seated. Then carefully extract the case and measure the OAL. Do this at least three time to make sure. The measurement will be at the point where the bullet engages the rifling. In some barrels, bullets sizes and/or designs the bullet may be completely out of the case before this happens. With this method you can customise your rounds for the gun. The shorter bullet jump to the rifling is usually preferred for accuracy and you should never have a too long of an OAL chambering problem.

Powder coating adds to the dimensions of the bullet in all areas. Therefore, there has been a buildup on the part of the bullet that enters the leade of the rifling, adding both length and diameter, that sizing does not touch. Increasing the seating depth would be the logical option. I find this happens on powder coated bore riding rifle bullets. Adding 2 or 3 thou on the bore riding section, can make closing the bolt difficult, or the impossibility of chambering the round, when using the seating depths that worked for traditionally lubed bullets. Just saying, that this can happen.

Powder coating adds to the dimensions of the bullet in all areas. Therefore, there has been a buildup on the part of the bullet that enters the leade of the rifling, adding both length and diameter, that sizing does not touch. Increasing the seating depth would be the logical option. I find this happens on powder coated bore riding rifle bullets. Adding 2 or 3 thou on the bore riding section, can make closing the bolt difficult, or the impossibility of chambering the round, when using the seating depths that worked for traditionally lubed bullets. Just saying, that this can happen.

It happens if you just coat and shoot and haven't measured your chamber and sized accordingly.

I would first check the throat as Doug suggested. If yours has none then some bullets will need to be seated too deep to work well (and cause higher pressures). You may have to change the bullet to one that will work with the throat you have.

The plunk test has to be part of everyone's routing when trying a new reloading setup. Every time you change bullets or increase OAL you should load up one as a dummy and do the plunk and feed test. As an extra step I like to use a black sharpie and 'paint' the bullet before hand to see where it strikes the feedramp and chamber on loading, as well as seeing if it is into the rifling.

When I find the right setup for a load I will save that dummy round and mark it. That way if I ever change something I have the correct OAL for that bullet and can easily reset my seating die.

i had the same problem as taterhead with the lee 356 125 2r, when powder coated, the nose is too fat to chamber without making them super short, i was somewhere around the measurement he gave .

i started using the lee 356 120 TC and havent had a problem since, i also got the NOE 130 mold grooveless to try and it never shot as good as the lee 120s in any of the 3 handguns i tried it in, and about the same in the 2 carbines